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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29704710">There's no stopping a lit match</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyLane123/pseuds/LilyLane123'>LilyLane123</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sanders Sides (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst and Drama, Angst and Feels, Background Dr. Emile Picani, Background Sleep | Remy Sanders, Drama, Humor, Logic | Logan Sanders Needs a Hug, M/M, Mean Girls References, Morality | Patton Sanders is a Little Shit, Morality | Patton Sanders-centric, Morally Grey Virgil, Protective Deceit | Janus Sanders, Sympathetic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Sympathetic Deceit | Janus Sanders, Unsympathetic Morality | Patton Sanders, morally grey Roman, only somewhat, star crossed lovers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 17:01:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,461</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29704710</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyLane123/pseuds/LilyLane123</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Patton was an absolute cherub of a side, certainly not one to snoop. At least, that's what the others think. But Patton has to do the dirty work for his kiddo Thomas, even if that means throwing his fellow sides under the proverbial bus. When Jan gets a bit too comfy for his liking, Patton comes up with a plan that will send him slithering back downstairs to the dark sides. But will Patton get his happy ever after, or will he get his just desserts?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anxiety | Virgil &amp; Creativity | Roman &amp; Logic | Logan &amp; Morality | Patton, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders &amp; Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders (mentioned), Logic | Logan Sanders &amp; Morality | Patton Sanders, Platonic LAMP</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>There's no stopping a lit match</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello! This was a prompt on tumblr from user @under-the-blue-moonlight that's inspired by the song World Burn from Mean Girls the musical. I had a lot of fun writing this even if I accidentally left this stewing for a month. Not to shamelessly tag but please follow me on tumblr @analogical-spacegays, feel free to yell headcanons at me and send in requests!</p>
<p>thank you for @juju-pkmn5 for being my beta for this despite her dyslexia!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>So. This is how Thomas was going to repay him, huh? When Patton says that he had always tried his diddly darndest to keep Thomas on the straight and narrow, he meant it. And yet here all of the sides were, standing on the sidelines as Thomas acted and pranced for all of the potential directors of</span>
  <em>
    <span> Psycho Godfather Wars II: The Stepfather Uprising. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Roman was having a grand old time prancing with him, he was practically overlapping Thomas as he guided Thomas through the motions and words. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves, even Logan was holding the script binder and mouthing along. Virgil was nervously tapping his foot along to the beat, even as his eyeshadow darkened and his fingers tugged at the strings of his hoodie. But there was yet another side present here, Janus was happily perched in his own imaginary director's seat and was clapping happily alongside the real directors. It was truly ironic, the </span>
  <span>traitors </span>
  <span>others always saw Patton as a naive fool, and yet they didn’t seem to notice the obvious symbolism Janus was displaying, he wasn't even being secretive like usual!  He was openly showing them that they were trapped under his thumb and catering to his every whim! Or maybe, the not so happy pappy thoughts told Patton, maybe they simply didn’t care. Perhaps they were content being played for suckers. Those poor sides simply didn’t know what was best for them, Patton decided. So it was naturally his job to make them see the light. </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The journey home after the callback was naturally filled with plenty of festivities on Roman’s part. The Mindpalace was covered wall to wall in various colors of balloons and streamers, there was even a homemade banner covered in glitter hanging from the stairs that read “Congratulations Thomas and Roman” on it. The sides were all convened in the living room, and Janus even convinced them to let Remus join in as long as he (for the most part) held his tongue. That of course prompted Remus to physically hold his tongue and start a chain of events that sent Virgil to the kitchen to get some punch (and totally not puke his brains out).  With Logan and Roman discussing the play and how to go about portraying certain scenes, Remus and Janus discussing the preservation time of a severed tongue, and Virgil ‘getting some punch’, this party proved as the perfect and rather ironic excuse for Patton to sneak upstairs and enact his plan. No one seemed to notice as he headed upstairs with the weak excuse that he “heard a noise”, which only seemed to fuel his intensity. Once he gets upstairs, he glares at the golden yellow door at the end of the hall. It stood out like a sore thumb in Patton’s eyes, four was a nice even number and thus every door had a match adjacent from it. Once positioned in front of the offending door, Patton just stands there a second. Was he really going to do this, purposely snoop on Jan? Wouldn’t that be immoral? Luckily for the plan, Patton happens to pick up on Jan’s soft voice from the floor under. He was clearly lying, Patton could tell by the infliction in his voice but he couldn’t quite make out what was being said. But it was Janus so it couldn’t be good. With a renewed sense of purpose and a bitter taste in his mouth, Patton pushes the door open and quickly slips in, closing it fast so they could hear him go into a room and believe him. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Once inside, his baby blue eyes sweep across the room as he scans for anything particularly incriminating. The yellow sunflower comforter was properly tucked under the mattress and his clothes were all properly put away. There was a snake terrarium in the corner with a heat lamp matching the one above Janus’s bed, but Patton didn’t dare disturb it from his slumber. The reptilian rapscallion would probably tattle on him if he did, he was sure of it. A shiver down his spine sends Patton back into action as he makes his way over to the bookshelf, maybe Jan was reading something particularly naughty. Patton is thoroughly disappointed, all he can find are books on snakes and psychology. Figures, even if Jan did  read such risque books he certainly wouldn’t leave them out in the open. This was a side of secrets and if Patton was going to find anything of note, he had to think like a snake. This train of thought drops Patton off at the desk, specifically the drawers at the bottom with locks.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span> A rather uncharacteristic smirk settles on his lips as he practically bounds over to the desk and nearly alerts the others to his uncanny position. When one thinks of Patton, he wouldn’t expect him to be the type to pick a lock, but they also wouldn’t peg him as a snooper, now would they? He pulls a bobby pin with a cute chibi frog on the end out from behind his brown locks. It takes him a few seconds to pick the locks, but once he does he has to bite back a squeal. He pulls open the drawer to take a peek inside and is thoroughly disappointed to not find much in there, honestly he hadn’t even tried to test the drawer to see if it was unlocked before picking the lock. All that was in this drawer was crayon children’s drawings, some mainly in green and red while others featured a prominence of purple and black. They were neatly categorized in manilla folders, each folder sporting a different year on it’s cover. Apparently 1996 was a particularly productive year for whomever was drawing all of these. With an eye roll, Patton closes the drawer again and heads over to the other side of the desk. This drawer doesn’t produce anything particularly noteworthy either, just some detailed drawings of sunflowers and snakes. Jan really did have a thing for the color yellow, didn’t he? Patton sighs as he shuts the drawer and gives the top of the desk a quick once over. There's an image of a younger Jan sitting with a grimy boy in green (who’s almost completely covered in dirt and missing a few front teeth) and a tiny purple bundle. Upon closer examination, Patton realizes that it’s a swaddled baby who happens to be holding tightly onto a stuffed bat with a tiny fist. Even seeing something so heartwarming doesn’t deter Patton, who should be the most likely to sympathize with a maternal figure like Jan (the image is practically the same as his photo with a young Roman and an even younger Logan). As a last ditch effort, Patton moves the bed over and looks under its usual position. At first glance, there’s absolutely nothing underneath. He even vacuums under the bed, there aren't even any dust bunnies (Patton still wishes those were real besides the ones Roman’s made him in the imagination) living there. But when Patton looks closer, he notices that one of the floorboards is missing its nails and thus is completely loose. He wastes no time at all pulling the board up, and gasps when he sees what’s inside. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a golden journal with little tabs peeking out the top, all of them their respective colors. H*ck, he even has a pink tab and a brown tab!  He quickly flicks through the different pages and his eyes widen when he starts to read the headings of each of the pages. How does Jan know about Roman’s secret appreciation of Panic! At the Disco?! Roman said he only told Patton that, and that he would keel over if Virgil ever knew it! Speaking of Virgil, the first item in his horrible chapter is right next to the page that reveals Roman’s favorite flavor of Crofters (Logan’s Berry), and it reveals that his favorite color isn’t purple like he wants everyone to believe. It’s actually pink, when he was younger he used to use a lot of pink things, all of his bibs were even pink. Patton, once he starts to realize what these pages are, quickly turns to his section. If you thought he was pale before, you’ve seen nothing yet. He growls softly under his breath as he frantically flips through, he really knows everything! While it terrifies Patton that Janus knows all of these deep and dark secrets, this is exactly what he needs to convince the other three that Jan isn’t to be trusted, especially while Virgil is still incredibly wary of him. Patton would be lying if he said he didn’t flick back over to Logan’s section, it was oddly bigger than the others. At first he just thinks it’s because of how secretive a side Logan is already, but when he sees it he practically drops the book. </span>
  <span></span>
    <br/>
  
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Holy-” . His exclamation is cut off when he hears someone start to ascend the stairs. Patton quickly shuts the book and sends it away to his own room so that he could properly assess it when he wasn’t in immediate danger of being discovered. He manages to sink out just as Jan’s door opens and the snakey side strides in, completely oblivious to the shitstorm that was about to befall him. In the safety of his room, Patton spends longer than he’d care to admit pouring over the different secrets festering within his friends, some of them more like brothers to him. As expected, Patton digs up some horrible notions that he would never wish to find. What may be the worst of all is Logan’s secret……..fling (Patton couldn’t dare to think of it as anything but) with </span>
  <em>
    <span>Remus</span>
  </em>
  <span> of all sides! The mere thought of it made Pat’s stomach churn in bad ways. At least Patton knew that all of the others would agree with him, this was just the kind of secret that would get Jan sent back where he belongs! After a bit of planning, this is not the kind of scheme you pull off on a whim after all, Patton speedwalks with a sense of purpose to the photocopier in the corner of Logan’s room. He copies every page in the book except for Jan’s secrets, Remy’s secrets, and Emile’s secrets. Now armed with the incriminating evidence he needed, all Patton had to do was wait for the perfect time to light the fire under everyone’s butts that they all needed. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>When Patton awoke the next morning, later than usual, the effects of his plan were already in motion. There were frantic yells from downstairs, the two voices that stood out the most belonging to Roman and Virgil. With a steadying breath, a worried look is plastered onto Patton’s face as he heads downstairs. He’s met with yelling from Roman, demanding to know who the fiend is that documented all of this, and Virgil freaking out and trying to breathe while dashing about and gathering up all of the purple text papers. Upon further examination, Logan is pacing around with a stack of his own papers and even Remus seems to look nervous, quietly trying to talk to his distressed </span>
  <span>boyfriend</span>
  <span>. Speaking of the shunned couple, Virgil and Roman were giving the two intense looks that would liquify someone like Patton. There was no clearer way to convey that what’s going on between the two of them was completely off limits. Eventually this whole situation began to come to a head, various sides yelling at each other. All of the tension built up  in the room and Patton was sure this was all going to boil over and explode when Virgil suddenly stops dead. A dark look crosses over his face and he stalks upstairs as all of the accumulated anger seems to follow him. The others watch with visibly confusion on their faces, but they don’t get any farther than the stairs before Virgil appears again at the top with the last needed piece to facilitate Janus’s downfall in his hands. As all eyes turn to Janus and the snake side turns whiter than a sheet with a matching blanket of snow, Patton can’t help but squee inside. Time for the fun to begin!</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>God, this wasn’t fun at all, this was such a bad idea! Patton can’t do anything but watch helplessly as Roman and Virgil berate a surprisingly upset looking Logan and a seething Remus. After the reveal the entire mind palace had seemed to go to H.E-double hockey sticks in a handbasket, starting with Jan’s subsequent banishment. He had been sent away in a rather familiar scene, the two screaming about him without pause for him to defend himself. Sure that was no fun, but at the end Patton’s demons started to catch up to him when he saw the look Jan was giving him. Janus knows what he did, that he was responsible. But he had no proof and even if he had the most compelling evidence in the world, there was no way Roman and Virgil would ever trust him again simply because he was undoubtedly the one who had compiled all of those secrets in the first place. To the two of them, Jan’s fate was set in stone. His room was quickly sent back down and all of his things in the common area had been hastily moved. Patton’s plan had succeeded in its entirety, but he was starting to expect that there were going to be more costs that he didn’t foresee (that hadn’t ever been his talent, had it?). </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Sure enough, Patton’s fears were confirmed as he was ripped violently out of his thoughts by a shout from….was Logan crying?! Sure enough, tears were streaming down Logan’s face as his ferocious attitude shines through in its full ugly light. There’s several things he wants to scream at them as a way of releasing years worth of pent up hurt and anger; you don’t ignore a side for so long and expect him to magically bounce back. In a final display of deep rooted hurt, Logan turns sharp on his heels and goes downstairs with his poster ever tight and his eyes leaking in a fashion Patton’s never seen before, and certainly not from the rock of the light sides. There’s a scoff from Virgil and Roman nods, Logan was only a step ahead of them. Patton watches as his famILY disintegrates at his own actions, his relationships all a smoldering pile of papers in the fireplace. To his horror, Patton begins to realize: he was the one holding the match, and it’s light had already spread to everyone he had held dear. </span>
</p>
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